Posts Tagged Weislogel

The question I have is whether there is anything at all in occult philosophy, hermeticism, mysticism, theosophical ideas, magic, Kabbalah, angelology, Rosicrucianism, or any of that kind of thing. People study it, of course, and some people study it in mainstream academia — but as a matter of historical or cultural interest. Some few of those academics get caught up in it, such as Guénon, who became a Sufi, but generally people get an interest about these ideas without coming to hold any of these ideas.

Why don’t they hold them?

Because alchemy is not as effective in the “real” world as chemistry. Because astrology allows fewer accurate predictions of future events than astronomy. Because physics has been more testable than metaphysics. Materialism and naturalism are seriously successful.

How do you define “success”?

Success means being able to do things in the world, to predict future events from current conditions, to control the outcomes of situations more effectively than leaving things to chance. Our world was not built based on our knowledge of spirits, past life regressions, the vibrations of crystals, or the formation of tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. If you want to know something, then the methodology of science is the way to go.

Is science our Platonic cave?

If so, the cave is air conditioned and heated, has hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, electric lights, refrigerated food, and the internet.

You are making a good case.

Yes, I think so.

But do you think that there is any kind of knowing that is not empirico-logical knowing? Or, in other words, are there alternative modes of logic or rationality?

I can’t see how. One can have an opinion on anything, but knowledge is that which can be demonstrated or rationally justified.

Can I know my wife loves me?

Do you mean, can you prove it beyond any doubt? I don’t think so. Can you prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? I think that is entirely possible. Proof does not have to mean mathematical proof in every case, but that admission does not entail that there are alternative rationalities.

What about things you cannot prove? What about the claim that Bach made better music than Justin Bieber?

Again, even though there is an element of taste (about which there is no disputing) involved, there is still a reasonable argument to be made that, assuming by “better” you mean (at least) more enduring, more culturally influential, that Bach made better music than Justin Bieber.

Not a completely knock down argument, though.

No, but a solid, reasonable claim.

Should I believe in angels?

Why should you? Have you ever seen one?

Did you see how little damage happened to my car last Friday when I hit a dear an near full speed on the interstate? I can’t help but think my Guardian Angel saved us.

You could help it, if you tried. You could say that your own quick reaction time and cool head, coupled with the geometry of the impact, etc., minimized the damage to your vehicle.

I suppose I could. But what if I really think an angel intervened on our behalf in that situation? Am I being unreasonable?

It would seem so. You are adding to the explanation more than is sufficient to explain the event.

I am not sure it is explainable.

We’ve just explained it. Look, if your Guardian Angel helped you out of the jam you were in, how did he…I’m sorry, is it a he?

No.

She?

No. It’s not like that. But you can say “he”.

Okay, if your Guardian Angel helped you out of the jam you were in, how did “he” do it? He did it by phenomenologically slowing things down for you, thus increasing your reaction time; by keeping you calm; by engineering the geometry of the impact in such a way to mitigate the damage to your vehicle. So why not just subtract the angel part? You’d have the same thing anyway.

Look, as you well know, I am not the most calm, cool-headed person you’ve ever met. My eyesight, especially at night, is not what it used to be. I was traveling fast. The deer was just there, all of a sudden. My vehicle by all rights ought to have been near-totaled. And my wife and I should be injured. But we are not.

Luck?

Hey, talk about believing things that are not susceptible of scientific investigation!

Okay, you are right. How about coincidence?

Again, not empirical, right?

Right. So I will stick with this claim: If we had the whole thing on tape, had you and your car wired to sensors and analytical devices sufficient for the assessment, we’d be able to completely reconstruct the event and causally explain every aspect of it.

“Sufficient for the assessment.” But what if there are no instruments sufficient for the assessment?

Maybe it is all an effect of quantum uncertainty, but quantum uncertainty, itself, is an empirical and rational framework for understanding. No angels. No ghosts. No gods.

What if it is just way more enjoyable to understand the world around me as filled with spirit beings of various sorts.

No, I could only see effects of the purported quarks. And it gets worse with superstrings. But scientists talk about them all the time.

Because they fit with the mathematics.

And you are absolutely sure that mathematics explains everything? Are there not qualitative aspects to reality that do not reduce to the quantitative? Is mathematics the only true language? Does mathematics really mirror reality?

It does seem fairly amazing how talking about the world mathematically helps you to predict, control, and do a lot of things you could not otherwise do if you talked about the world in another language, for instance, English.

A lot of things, yes. All the things we do? Hardly. In fact, the current craze to computer analyze every creative work misses the point of those works entirely. Physics didn’t explain why Socrates sat in prison awaiting his fate, and “digital humanities” will not help us engage any better with the Bard. Even gematria, the ancient practice of numerological analysis of texts, was not an end in itself. Even if it were to be mere projection, it still sparked reflection and insight. And even more simply, the stories of ancient myths were probably never meant to be taken literally (although some people did take them that way and some still do). They were heuristics to insight and wisdom.

They were a load of rubbish. They were attempts to explain the world that, as it turned out, were much worse than the way we explain the world now. It’s that simple.

So the imagination should be suppressed? But wasn’t it the imagination that kick-started the quest to understand in the first place?

Okay, if you want to put it that way. But we’ve moved on from those ancient stories. They perhaps were a ladder we needed to climb up, but now that we’re up we can safely kick it away.

Do you think we’ll ever find we can kick away science?

Never.

But if our scientific, technological framework is — and this is undeniable — threatening the very existence of the planet, i.e., if we’ve come to a crisis point, would you agree that we might need another way to think and understand if we are going to get through this ecological disaster?

No. Science will find a way out.

That is a risky bet. Science — and it is very complicit with capitalism — has organized the world in such a way as to foreclose — as you are doing now — on alternative frameworks. And that, in itself, bears a significant responsibility for our present disaster. There is — by definition — no morality attached to either modern science or capitalism. And why not? Because real morality cannot be quantified, algorithmized, or productized. And what goes for ethics, goes double for spirit.

Yeah, listen, you may as well throw out this computer you are working on because it was science that gave it to you.

Well, I very well may have to when the power goes off for the last time.

Such a pessimist!

You think I am crying “wolf”?

Yep. Well, no. You aren’t making it up. You believe it. But then again you believe in faeries and sprites.

I didn’t say I did. I was asking.

Well one thing I do know: if you are right about the impeding apocalypse, it won’t be faeries or sprites that save us.

Well, I’m just trying to get at what you mean when you say that “nothing really matters.”

What I mean is this: we are born, who knows why; we live for a while—maybe a short while, maybe a long while, but only a while; then we die, leaving it all (whatever that will have been) right where we left it. So, given our lack of immortality, nothing ultimately really matters. Things might matter or seem to matter during our sojourn here. But that is about it.

Should I feel negatively about this insight of yours?

Feel whatever you want.

Well, okay, but I am soliciting advice. Assuming that your insight is correct, then what’s life all about? If it doesn’t really ultimately matter what I do, whether I help or hurt others, whether I am ambitious or lackadaisical, what would you advise me to take up as a stance, if you will, towards life?

Well, how about this: This life might be best thought of as a play or a game in which you are a player no matter whether you like it or not. It seems to have a way or at least some finite number of ways about it in which you can make your play in it not completely unbearable. Find those ways, go with that flow. Don’t misunderstand: I mean go with that flow, not just the way any flow happens to go. Find the way, then go with that flow as best you can.

Vague advice. Thank you.

You’re welcome. But it’s a vague game.

So absurdism? Surrealism? Existentialism?

Maybe, sort of…but I wouldn’t look at it quite like that. That way of trying to look at things implies that one of those ways is the best or most valid or most accurate way of thinking about life. I don’t really think that’s right, even given my profound insight that nothing matters. Nothing matters, but everything is important…or at least it can be important. To me, to you, to people we love. Cosmically, of course, it just is all going to go the way I said. Me, you, all we love…all will be gone in the blink of an eye. But why should that matter? It matters not at all to our way while we’re all here. That fact, in other words, matters just as little as whether I become a great scholar, the President of the United States, or a bull-fighter…cosmically speaking. If you are waiting for some external touchstone to make itself known so you can know how you are doing, forget it! In fact, that is more than just futile. It’s bad. Bad for you, bad for me, bad for the ones you love.

I don’t get it.

Look, let’s say you want to do well by the ones you love – of course you do! What would that take? A deep relationship with the cosmos and eternity? Wow! If those you love have to wait around for you to get settled with that, they may find it better to push on without you. What it takes, rather, is a deep relationship with them for no further reason at all! In fact, if you do have some “reason” for that relationship, then, well, it’s all a little suspect, don’t you think? Is it because they pay your rent or do your laundry or look good on your arm at cocktail parties? How profound!

Okay, love is without why. I get it. But I can’t just sit around gazing at those I love and just emote love in their direction all day long. I have to do something. Right?

I guess. Sure…you have to do something.

Okay, so what do I do?

Why are you asking me?

I am asking you because that’s what we’re having a conversation about. A conversation about life’s direction.

Can life have a direction regardless of what you do? Is life waiting around for you to do something so it can have a direction?

Are you saying that our choices of actions have no bearing on life’s direction?

But what if life’s direction is about the fact that we choose and not about what we choose?

That cannot be right. Whether I choose to be a scholar or I choose to be a thief matters.

It won’t matter is 100 years…or 500…or 100,000 years.

No, but it will matter now. It is not just that I can choose one or the other. It is that I choose the one and not the other.

What about this choice: What if you had to choose either to be a physician or to be a painter? Would that matter?

Yes, I suppose.

Okay, so what do you choose?

Well, what am I good at?

Are you saying that one should always do what one is good at?

It can be a guide towards bliss, can’t it.

I guess. But couldn’t it also be a pathway to servitude?

How so?

Suppose you are good at math. Everyone always tells you that you are good at math. They always buy you a nice gift when you come home with an A in math. You are recruited to become an actuary because you are good at math. Actuaries get paid well and have excellent job security. Why would you not be an actuary? Except, you’d rather be a dancer. You are not as good at dancing as you are at math. The job prospects for dancers are horrible compared to those for actuaries. But you love dancing. You want to be a dancer. What do you do?

I see your point. I guess you have to have a job.

You have to have a job?

So long as you are living in this NON-utopia, you need a job.

Okay, physician or painter?

Painters don’t have the best job prospects.

Let’s say you have a patron who will provide for you. You might not get as much as a physician makes, but you will not starve. Which do you choose?

Am I a better doctor or painter?

You are equally talented.

Then I guess I become a doctor. Wait! I like being a doctor, right?

Yes, let’s say you like being a doctor.

Okay, I would pick physician.

Why?

I would help more people.

So one should always pick the path that helps more people.

Yes.

What if you love to dance but can only tolerate being a physician, even though you are very good at being a physician?

I pick physician.

What if you love to dance but can’t really say you like doctoring at all, except that you are still good at it?

I pick physician.

So no matter what, one should take the path that helps the most people.

Yes.

Does dancing help anyone?

Not like a physician.

Physicians help sick people (or at least they try). Don’t dancers and other artists help people, both sick and well, to enjoy life, to see more deeply into reality, and so on?

Are you saying that artists are just as “socially useful” as physicians?

Yes. And trash collectors and farmers and firefighters. I am saying that your measure for determining which path to take is flawed. It might help you choose physician over thief, but it is no use for almost every other choice.

So how does one make the choice?

Talent, bliss, fellow-feeling, care and concern, worldly comfort (loosely construed), concrete possibilities. But there is not really any big-picture stance from which to judge these situations.

I think you are depressing me.

Oh, I hope not! I think I am trying to get you to feel liberated. The depression that you think you feel is coming from a removable source. Remove it, and you will feel freer.

I should write the CorpScrew Letters. What would it be good for the corporate devils to have us think, feel, believe?

Here’s a thought it would be good for Uncle CorpScrew to advise his younger Tempters to promote: That politics doesn’t matter, that it is, in fact, evil. That would be very Orwellian. It would get people thinking that politics = government, and government = pernicious meddling in our lives, and thus by the transitive property of equality, that politics = pernicious meddling in our lives. Because if we can believe that, then we will find ourselves defending CorpScrew’s minions around the world, helping to “keep government of our backs” and by “our backs” I mean “corporations’ backs” and not our backs. We will be useful idiots.

It would be good to get people to think that “useless” means “worthless.”

It would be good to have people be confounded by, at turns, thinking the world they see is exactly the world as it is and is meant to be AND that we have no access to the world as it is and as it is meant to be and so what anyone says about it is simply mere opinion. They wouldn’t know whether to cry or wind their watch.

It would be good to get people to think that there are only big problems.

It would be good to get people to think that there are either no solutions to big problems or that there are only big solutions to big problems.

It would be good to get people to think that there is nothing beyond death and that death is bad. This will get a lot of people killed.

For those who persist in thinking that there is something beyond death, it would be good to get them to think that this means they need take no notice of what’s happening now. This will help get a lot of people killed, as well.

Yeah. Sometimes I think I see the simple pattern of all the struggles that our common life together seems to bring.

Really?

Yes. Let me explain. I read the following sentences in a book:

In what measure and by what means can individuals accept themselves as mortal without any imaginary instituted compensation; in what measure can thought hold together the demands of the identitary logic which are rooted in the Legein and the exigencies of what is (which is surely not identitary without becoming for that reason incoherent); in what measure, finally and especially, can society truly recognize in its institution its own self-creation, recognize itself as institution, auto-institute itself explicitly, and surmount the self-perpetuation of the instituted by showing itself capable of taking it up and transforming it according to its own exigencies and not according to the inertia of the instituted, to recognize itself as the source of its own alterity? These are the questions, the question of revolution, which not only go beyond the frontier of the theorizable but situate themselves right away on another terrain…the terrain of the creativity of history. [Cornelius Castoriades, cited by Dick Howard, The Marxian Legacy, 298-299.]

Say what, now?

Yeah, dense, isn’t it? But what is the simple meaning? To me, this goes back to Aristotle, at least. What is the good life? It is the life that is best for us to lead. How do we know it? How do we learn it? We learn it by watching others and forming habits. But what if the habits we form by watching others whom society says are worth imitating, what if that leads us to vice, not virtue? What if the whole society is corrupt? Is there any hope? Yes, because although moral virtue is very important, there is more to being a human than moral virtue. There is what Aristotle calls intellectual virtue, which is being able to see what is—even past the habits and practices and institutions of our own society. With those intellectual virtues, we always have access to the other, to the unexpressed, to the not-now visible possibilities. Indeed, this goes further back, to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” in which the prisoner somehow slips his bonds (but how?) and gets out of the darkness of illusion and can see what is in its truth. But the prisoner does not—cannot—live in this “realm” because he is human. He needs his institutions in order to live. Those institutions make life possible AND impossible at the same time. To say this in a formula: I am in society, but not wholly of it. I carry my alterity with me. I need the bonds of identitary logic to live AND I am always more and other than how that logic “identifies” me, how it turns me into a (mere) identity.

Perhaps that goes even further back to the very edge of thought: the many and the one, identity and difference, analysis and synthesis.

Indeed, it does. The truth is in the middle and the margin, in the in-between and at the edges.

I am, indeed. Your problem is that you are incoherent. Or inconsistent. Or inconsistently coherent. Or something like that.

Well, I’m glad you cleared that all up for me.

I’ll demonstrate: What are you, conservative or liberal?

Do I have to be one or the other?

See what I mean?

Isn’t there a third (or fourth) choice?

Like?

I’m a nonarchist.

No you’re not.

Yes I am.

Nope. That’s just a word you made up because you simply couldn’t decide what you are.

A nonarchist believes in no first principles (archai). He differs from the anarchist in that the anarchist thinks there are no first principles. But that is his first principle, so to speak. It is not mine. I believe in no first principles, not even that one.

Isn’t that just saying there are no first principles?

No, it’s not the same. The reason anarchy is so often tied to violence is that the anarchist is usually a true believer. He believes that whatever is going on is bad and that blowing it up is a moral imperative. I do not believe that.

All anarchist are bomb-throwing maniacs?

No. In fact, I very much object to that characterization because it’s the one used by The Powers-That-Be to make anarchistic thinking seem “beyond the pale.” However, because there are in fact anarchist principles, it is possible for there to be true believers, and true believers can be very dangerous.

Is non-archy like casuistry? Are you a casuist?

Okay, yes, I suppose I am. I think there are only events, cases, and that each case has something that uniquely distinguishes it from every other case.

You know the knock on casuistry, right?

Something about inconsistency or incoherency or even hypocrisy…something like that?

Right.

Right, well the thing is, if you aren’t a casuist, then you think there are real governing patterns, forms, principles, or whatever, that take precedence over persons, places, things, and times. To me, that is hypocritical—literally, not critical enough. For the sake of your blessed consistency (the hobgoblin of tiny minds, it has been said), you are willing to neglect or deny the uniqueness of persons, places, things, and times. I am unwilling to be so sub-critical.

But if you nonarchist casuists were to win the day, then would we be absolute relativists? And if we were, wouldn’t morality go right out the window? All we’d be left with is “what’s right for me is right for me, and what’s right for you is right for you and there is nothing we can really say to each other.”

Do you think so? I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think it would turn out like that. I think we human beings have a lot in common—a whole lot, in fact—even though each of us is unique.

Well, then, are these commonalities the first principles of ethics?

Not like some people think. You can’t just read off these commonalities and develop an algorithm to solve all our problems once and for all. But we are real people with real commonalities in real situations, and from within them we can try—no guarantees—to solve our problems. Or maybe even find that what we think are problems really aren’t problems at all.

What do you mean?

Well, for instance, “religion” seems to have been a longstanding problem for us human beings. But maybe it doesn’t have to be.

How so?

If we didn’t have to be so consistent and coherent and all that, maybe each person could be religious (or not) in his own way without that seeming such a scandal to others. And, at the same time, the person living out this “religious” expression won’t be so damn certain (coherent, consistent) that he lets it bring him misery or to wreak misery on others.

That’s a lot to hope for.

I am a religious man.

You are a nonarchist, casuist, religious man.

Yes, for starters. I am also a man who likes pizza. Consistently, you’ll be pleased to know.

It happened again on Monday. We were talking in class about the importance of the body in Christian theology — not in any rigorous way, but I was pointing out that many Christians think that when you die you go to heaven and stay there forever. But then what about the Creed: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”? If the body is the principle of individuation, then you will need a body (perhaps a “glorified” body) in order to be you. According to Christian tradition, dying and going to heaven is not the end of the story.

Anyway, prior to this discussion students were giving their opinions as to what happens after you die. Some said that you will come back in another body, perhaps even as an animal. Some thought you would come back, but only as some other human being. But, as usual, most thought when you die (if you’re good) you go to heaven forever. By the way, only a few thought some other people (bad people) would go to hell forever.

Then a couple of students asked me what I thought about it. As usual, I punted. I said, “Who cares what I think? I’m just some guy.” They insisted. I replied that I have a certain power relation to them, and that if I were to give my views either (a.) students would believe it was true because it was my view; (b.) students would not believe it, but would regurgitate it on the test in the hopes of getting a better grade by appearing to believe what I believe; (c.) students would just fixate on my beliefs to the detriment of our learning the views of some really important thinkers. One student, however, asked, “Well how about (d.), simple curiosity?”

All this brought to mind a piece in Chronicle of Higher Education by my good friend, Paul Sracic, entitled, “Teach Only What You Know,” (10/11/2007). Sracic, a professor and Chair of the department of political science at Youngstown State University, was asked during one of his government classes whom he intended to vote for in the presidential election. Sracic refused to answer. Indeed, he took the fact that his students did not have any idea who he supported to be a sign that he was doing his job well. He said the college catalogue description of the course didn’t say anything about his sharing his political views, and, besides, he was no more qualified to answer that question (as an academic matter) than anyone else in any other department. He argued that in cases where knowledge (as opposed to opinion) was available, then we ought to consult the person(s) holding that expertise. But in cases where such knowledge is lacking, let everyone decide for himself. No one is an expert.

When we are all equally ignorant, we might as well vote.

His piece elicited a great deal of commentary and criticism. While many applauded his professionalism, many others took him to task for cheating his students of something they came to college particularly to get: the informed views of teachers and scholars who’ve done some real legwork in the questions that we all face. Students, the critics argued, are not sheep, and they will not mindlessly ape their teachers. Why not tell them your views? They asked.

The more intense criticism tried to make analogies: What if they asked you your view of torture? Would you simply coyly demure? Is there not a moral imperative attached to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom? And would it not be a moral failure to refrain from making moral judgments (no matter how unpopular).?

I may have mentioned that I am no fan of the comments section of websites. However, back in the day I felt compelled to toss in my two-cents’ worth on the matter. I have reproduced those comments here, but the gist is that, while I am sympathetic to Sracic’s concerns, the university – especially in the humanities – has lost its way in exploring the great questions of existential and spiritual concern in its obsession with “professionalism.” Being a professional is important, of course, but can we professors not put ourselves as well as our learning into our work?

So today, I had to decide what to say – if anything – to my students who I put off on Monday. I was not sure what I was going to do even up to the point I opened my mouth to begin the class. But I told them about Paul, about my response, and how I did not think I was consistent with my otherwise deeply held views. I then asked them if they would like me to share my opinions about such things as life after death and other questions about which no one has any expertise – certainly not I.

For the most part, they said yes they would. One student preferred that I did not because he had had an experience with another prof who always gave his (or her?) personal view, and then students who got bad scores on papers chalked it up to their disagreement with the prof. Another student pointed out that, in effect, they trust me not to be like that. I think I can say that they really can trust me on that point.

So I told them what I think. And now, with the same trepidation, I will tell you, dear reader: What I think is both (a.) that when you die, you’re dead and (b.) that Kellie (my wife) and I will be together somehow forever and ever, that we are far more connected than physics can explain or comprehend. I have no reason to think people come back. I believe that each and every human that has ever lived is unique, a singularity as Caputo would say, and when we die the world – the cosmos – loses something. I don’t keep a scorecard for beliefs vs. knowledge. I know I don’t know what happens after death. The question for me is whether the answer to that question matters now, in this life, and if so, how? But, for what it’s worth (and it’s not much), I told them (and now you) what I think.

They asked me my religion. I told them: “Heinz 57 Varieties.” They asked me if I go to church. I told them I go to brunch or go birding. They asked my why I had trouble with the RC church. I told them I felt abandoned when I went through a crisis. They asked me if I am an atheist. I told them that I am definitely not, but that I usually act like one. They asked me a bunch of questions. I do not mean to say that anyone was truly prying, and I did not in any way “over-share,” as they say. But for a few minutes I did feel unusually vulnerable.

I found it was a bit difficult for me at times. Maybe that’s because I hide behind my persona too much. Maybe it is because I know that as today’s discussion was oriented, it was not the purpose of our class meeting. Maybe I was uncomfortable not knowing (and exhibiting that non-knowing). Maybe I didn’t like my own views, or didn’t like that I couldn’t articulate them well or explain them satisfactorily.

These kinds of questions, as you can easily see, are either personal questions (and not really part of the curriculum at all) or broadly philosophical questions that cannot be managed in soundbites. One student – one of my very good ones (in a whole class-full of very good ones) – noted that the questions raised today were “too big” and would be better discussed “over coffee.” She is right, of course. Good philosophical method dictates one should try to analyze the big questions into more manageable bites and certainly to give arguments for those views. I freely admitted I had no good arguments (although, maybe I have “arguments” of some sort…).

I will never be the guy who comes into class and wastes a lot of time talking about sports or my hobbies or spouting off my political views (I have a blog for that!). But I suppose if in the future I am asked for my opinions about such things as I usually refrain from addressing, I should consider answering if there is some way to tie it into what we’re doing (as I tried to do a couple of times even in today’s session). I think it might help deepen the trust relation that I am fortunate to have with my students. I had to trust them, or I would not have had that kind of conversation with them today.

Every class I collected a notecard from the students which includes their understanding of the key points of the day’s class and a question or two that arose for them. I read today’s notecards with particular attention. I would say that the overwhelming majority of students who offered their opinion of the day’s session as a whole indicated that it was a positive experience.

I am grateful to them, and I would not want to cheat them in any way.

Whoever is a teacher through and through takes all things seriously only in relation to his students – even himself.